The modern office requires a wide assortment of connectivity or wiring circuits for individual employee work areas, called workstations herein. AC electrical power, telephone voice communication, low speed data communication between computer terminals and central computers, and high speed local area network (LAN) data communication represent a few of the most common connectivity needs of employee work areas. In addition, many work areas use multiple voice circuits to support multiple phone lines, facsimile machines, modems, and the like. Often, multiple data lines communicate computer data to printers, plotters, remote input devices, and the like. Increasingly, work areas access fiber optic, broadband LAN, and video communication links.
Conventionally, the management of all these connectivity needs has been performed in an extremely make-shift, haphazard, and inefficient manner. As a result, work area connectivity has become extremely expensive, for both original wiring installation and later-occurring changes. For example, buildings often use independent systems to distribute power, voice, data, LAN, and video. This leads to a costly duplication in materials and labor. In addition, it leads to a costly lack of organization in overall building connectivity.
In addition, buildings often utilize connectivity systems which rely heavily upon on-site, hard-wired connections. Hard-wired connections require each end of a wire to be prepared. Such preparations typically involve removing insulation, dressing wire ends, identifying individual wires, applying terminators, attaching wires, applying strain reliefs, and the like. The attaching of a wire may be to another wire, a connection block, terminal, or the like. Accordingly, such hard-wired connections must be patiently and painstakingly performed by highly skilled, and expensive, personnel. Moreover, after wiring preparations, such highly skilled personnel must test and occasionally trouble-shoot a network of such wires. As a result, costs associated with the installation of conventional connectivity systems often reach astronomical proportions.
The physical environment of the modern office also changes at an increasing pace. These changes in the physical environment impose frequent changes in work area connectivity. However, conventional connectivity systems are extremely inflexible. Hard-wired connections again require the services of highly skilled personnel to make necessary changes. Often times such personnel are not available when needed, and entire schedules suffer as a result. When buildings employ separate connectivity systems for power, voice communication, data communication, LAN communication, video communication, and the like, the overall connectivity structure becomes extremely unorganized. False floors, ceilings, and wiring raceways, often resemble a "rat's nest" of cabling. Accordingly, minor connectivity changes often turn into extremely complicated and time consuming procedures due to this disorganization. Often, connectivity system changes are more efficiently implemented by entirely scrapping a prior system and installing an entirely new connectivity system when only moderate changes are imposed in a physical environment.
The prior art describes a few devices which address connectivity problems in the modern office. However, most of such devices address minor portions of the overall problem, and therefore fail to significantly reduce connectivity costs or to increase connectivity flexibility. For example, various manufacturers supply breakout boxes, connectors, raceways, ducts, and the like which serve as modular components that a designer may couple together to implement a connectivity system. However, such modular components fail to address the integration of various connectivity systems and the overall end-to-end connectivity problem. The use of such components provides little help in significantly reducing installation costs or in improving flexibility.
The above-referenced patent discloses a system which makes significant improvements in the conventional haphazard techniques utilized in providing connectivity. Still, this system relies upon undesirably numerous hard-wired connections in conveying electrical power from a building's power distribution center to individual workstations. Likewise, the system disclosed therein relies upon undesirably long runs of individual cabling for both electrical power and various types of communication. Generally speaking, individual cabling costs more and is more difficult to install and revise than collective cabling which conveys the same capacity. Thus, a need exists for a system which supports increased use of collective cabling and less use of individual cabling.